Sister of Harris Victim ‘Felt Peace’ at the End : Relatives: Four family members of the two San Diego boys who where murdered witness the execution.

The first time her brother’s killer walked into the gas chamber Tuesday morning, Marilyn Clark saw the same smirking jerk she recalled from old television news footage. That made her incredibly, indescribably furious, she said.

The second time, two hours later, Robert Alton Harris was a changed man, Clark said. He walked purposefully into the chamber and sat down, “facing it like a man,” she said. Then, surprisingly, he said he was sorry.

She cried in relief and joy. And, minutes later, as he was dying, Clark said she felt a tranquil wave of forgiveness wash over her, felt it bring her peace, felt it driving away the hatred that had darkened her soul when Harris killed her younger brother, John Mayeski, and his best pal, Michael Baker.

“It was spiritual,” Clark said. “When he leaned over for the last time, everything I went there for just lifted off my shoulders. I felt peace. And I felt for Harris that he was at peace.

” . . . I have justice,” she said in an interview immediately after driving away from the prison. “I have finality. I have closure. I know Harris is somewhere else, and he’s OK. And I know for damn sure that I’m OK.”

Clark, 34, of Oceanside, the only Mayeski relative to witness Harris’ death, said she had approached the execution with a mixture of dread and duty.

No one else in her family wanted to watch Harris die. So they took a vote and sent her to San Quentin.

There was no such reluctance on the Baker side. Steve Baker, Michael Baker’s father, a 49-year-old San Diego police detective, had been saying for years that he wanted to watch Harris die and would gladly drop the cyanide pellets, if need be. Years of endless appeals were making a mockery of the law, he said.

Michael Baker’s mother, Sharron Mankins, 48, announced weeks ago that she, too, wanted to witness the execution. She said she didn’t much care to see Harris suffer. But only his death would bring finality to the case, she said.

Linda Herring, Michael Baker’s 26-year-old sister, said she also wanted to attend. She said she was angry at Harris for the suffering he caused Michael Baker, who was shot four times. She hoped Harris would suffer immense pain before dying.

But Clark said she owed her mother the duty of watching the killer die. Kathryn Mayeski Sanders had desperately wanted to view the execution, but she died last year of cancer.

“I cherished the ground my mother walked on,” Clark said. “This was the least I could do for her.”

Clark knew that her own emotions were still tangled up in lingering grief that seemed without resolution. Four years older than John, she had been a big sister and like a mom to him, she said. It seemed unlikely that watching Harris die would untangle that hurt. “I knew it would help me,” she said. “But I wasn’t exactly sure how.”

She had a “very vivid” dream of the precise moment when Harris would expire. In the dream, she said, his death unleashed thousands of black gremlins that orbited his head, shrieking like bats and tearing around the heads of the witnesses before descending in a tornado to hell.

She has taken solace in visiting her brother’s grave, at least twice a week. She said she longed to be able to tell him, “Now you can rest in peace.” But what if the execution didn’t enable her to do that?

When Harris sauntered into the gas chamber as the clock neared 4 a.m. Tuesday, “it seemed like it was a big joke to him,” Clark said.

“He’s smirking, he’s giving a guard a thumbs-up, he’s wiggling, no eye contact with anybody,” she said. “He had that smirk on his face, like we’re used to seeing him. Boy, he was gray. And bald. But he still had that smirk.

“It was the first time I had ever seen him up close. That smirk, up close. I’m furious.”

A few minutes later, she was even more furious. A federal judge stayed the execution. Harris was unstrapped.

“It was sick,” Clark said. Still, she believed there would be an execution. “I figured the lawyers would play their up and down, their Mickey Mouse games,” she said. “But I knew that, before I left that prison, there was going to be an execution.”

Two hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court dissolved the stay, and again Harris walked into the gas chamber.

“The second time, he knew,” Clark said. “There was remorse there. You could just see it. No smirky smiles. When he knew it was finally over, a totally different man walked in that room.”

Harris sat down in the chair and looked straight at Steve Baker. “I think it was the hardest thing he ever did,” Clark said. “He really wanted the family members to know he was sorry. He looked right at Steve and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ You could see he really honestly meant it. It was a special moment.

“I just broke down and cried. I knew what he was trying to tell us. And I looked at him, and I saw just another human being. So I tried to reach out in a way, I can’t explain this very well, a spiritual way, and tell him I could forgive him because he was giving his life like that, accepting it like a man.”

The cyanide gas seemed anything but cruel and unusual, she said. “Even when he was gasping for air, he took big gulps to get it over with. Then he went to sleep. There was no jerking. He rolled, back and forth, like something was bothering him in his dreams.”

“When I saw his head go down for the last time, I said a prayer for him,” she said. “It was like, ‘I just hope he’s taken out of his misery.’ And I felt Harris was at peace with himself for what he’d done.

“Then I just totally felt this rush of being at peace with myself. I never thought in my life that this would come over me. All the hatred inside me totally disappeared. It was like the miracle of forgiveness. Before, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t forgive him.

“And then I did.”